Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro has resigned from Georgetown University Law Center, objecting to its requirement that he undergo racial sensitivity training over tweets critical of President Biden’s Supreme Court nomination process.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Mr. Shapiro called the plan to reinstate him “untenable” because it would set him up for future discipline by the university’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action (IDEAA).
Georgetown suspended him on Jan. 31, one day before his first day of work as head of a research center, to investigate his Jan. 26 tweets that said the Biden administration would nominate “a lesser Black woman” to the Supreme Court by excluding other qualified candidates based on gender and race.
Mr. Shapiro’s tweets called on Mr. Biden to consider Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The Georgetown Black Law Students Association demanded Mr. Shapiro’s firing over the tweets, which came before Mr. Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Mr. Shapiro later apologized for the wording of the tweet, telling Reason magazine he regretted “my poor choice of words, which undermine my message that no one should be discriminated against for his or her gender or skin color.”
On Thursday, Georgetown announced that he would finally be allowed to start work after receiving training in “implicit bias, cultural competence, and non-discrimination.”
In a statement emailed to The Washington Times on Monday, a Georgetown spokesperson said the university “followed the regular processes for members of the Law Center staff” in reviewing Mr. Shapiro’s conduct.
“While we protect speech and expression, we work to promote civil and respectful discourse,” the spokesperson said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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